


brain break

by joisattempting



Series: look over there it's a wild falsettos college au [4]
Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Brain Breaks, Crack, Exams, F/F, F/M, M/M, Restaurants, because (let's say it together folks), charlotte is late, condiment wars, dyslexic whizzer, i still can't tag smh, i won't give any context, marvin is a gentleman, marvin isn't ok, neither is trindel but tbh it might as well be, they all go to chick fil a, trina cries over juxtaposition, we got some platonic whizzvin up in this shit, whizzer draws lil smiley faces on his fingernails, whizzer is cold, whizzvin isn't a thing yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-29 03:09:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21132134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joisattempting/pseuds/joisattempting
Summary: the gang take a brain break.





	brain break

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to pART F O U R  
i started this yesterday and then stopped because i was tired  
i had a lot of fun writing this!!! also a giant thank you to @exexlovers for all your help with ideas, and also for coming up with the smiley faces thing, you're the best :)
> 
> comments and kudos would mean everything to me!  
have fun folks

“Can we get out of here?”

Mendel’s question acted as some sort of magic spell on the rest of the overtired college kids, who were currently camped out at Shrek’s Swamp, the affectionate name Cordelia had christened her shared apartment. Midterm week snapped at their heels like a famished monster. Books and stray papers littered the place, forever winding up in the most questionable places. Trina and Mendel’s visits were growing frequent, as neither of them were partial to studying alone, preferring the company of their group of six. Nobody spoke, really. Just plugged in their headphones and forced their aching brains to remember some complicated word with an even more complicated meaning. 

Today, the atmosphere was particularly tense. Everyone had their first exam the next day. If you looked around, you’d think they hadn’t glanced at the material once. Marvin’s eyes were the size of quarters, his untameable curls even messier as he rapidly flipped through his law book. There was still a paltry few chapters to get through before he was finished, and he was already hallucinating the definitions choking him to death. Maybe it was the concerning amounts of Red Bull he’d consumed talking, maybe it was the fact that he hadn’t looked up from the small print of the Latin words in over thirty minutes. 

Expression mirroring that of Marvin, Charlotte sat in her designated seat on the living room couch, painstakingly drawing diagram after diagram of the bones in the hand. She’d almost thrown her hefty, hardcover textbook at Mendel’s head after she couldn’t remember where the ulna was located in the hand. A third cup of coffee lay untouched on the coffee table beside her. She’d had two already, preparing for yet another night of lost sleep. Honestly, she didn’t notice it half the time. All she wanted was an A on this fucking exam. 

Over in the guys’ room, Cordelia helped Whizzer craft flashcards. He was an auditory learner, and had a memory that was almost as swift as his metabolism. Too many words only muddled his brain, and so he preferred to have his childhood friend test him on whatever he needed to know, scoring him high marks in the exam itself. Cordelia was more than happy to oblige - her midterms were often based on practical work, and she had that down to a T. One or two practices every day of her most complex dishes came in handy. Of course, it was tough at first; tasks like measuring the seasoning, ensuring the food wasn’t burnt nor undercooked, and giving the dish a pleasant appearance weren’t exactly simple. 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Charlotte managed to respond, her eyes never tearing away from her textbook. “We all have exams tomorrow,”

Mendel sighed, massaging his temples. Being surrounded by nothing but psychological terms and examples of mental health disorders made your head swim. “We could all use a break. Trina’s cried twice over the fucking juxtaposition in Hamlet, and Marvin hasn’t moved for the past half hour,”

“Where would we go?” Trina mumbled, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. She’d been writing a practice essay, Mendel occasionally looking over her shoulder. Sometimes she’d ask if it was detailed enough, or if she had fully explained her point. His answer was always the same: “I don’t understand it, so it’s probably making Shakespeare himself piss his pants because he’s so embarrassed,”

“How about, like, Chick Fil A?” Whizzer’s tired voice proposed, and he appeared in the doorway, his blonde friend by his side. The photography major looked debilitated, to say the least, quite the contrary to the usual put-together, classy ambiance that he seemed to carry. Bags were situated under his half-shut eyes and his brown waves cascaded over his forehead. 

“At ten PM?”

“Sure,”

Cordelia yawned. There was a wide array of burn marks and cuts and scars on her hands from all the times she’d practised under a time limit. Being aware of the minutes ticking by as you worked really took a toll on your accuracy. They all looked rather like zombies. The girl was fairly certain all the new information being absorbed was just going through one ear and out the other. “I’m going to kashoot myself if I have to make another flashcard on the anatomy of a camera,”

Whizzer snapped his fingers underneath Marvin’s nose. The law student jolted, spilling his fourth energy drink down his front. He was just about to give whoever stood in front of him a piece of his mind, but he found himself going mute when he lifted his head and saw Whizzer. Why? Don’t ask him. “Everything okay, Whiz?” he croaked. 

“We’re gonna go to Chick Fil A and get dinner, and you’re coming,”

“I don’t get a say?”

“Absolutely not,”

As if on cue, his tattered nylon coat hit him in the face. After ten minutes, all six of them were out the door, walking down the bustling New York streets in the bitter cold, their destination being the nearest Chick Fil A they could find. Trina had pulled up directions on her phone, and Charlotte had become self-appointed leader of the pack. Bringing up the rear were Marvin and Whizzer, sluggishly ambling behind the others. The former kept his head down, springy curls falling into his face. His blue eyes gave the occasional flicker over to Whizzer, whose gloveless hands had gone pink with cold. Marvin then decided to be a gentleman, something he didn’t do often. “You want my gloves?”

Whizzer looked up at him, pulling his hat down further over his ears. “Are you sure?” 

At Marvin’s nod, he extracted a hand to take the knitted blue mittens from the law student. Not discreetly at all, Marvin examined the taller man’s hands. They were small, with lean fingers, and they could bend in ways that made him wince, due to Whizzer’s being double-jointed. His nails, Marvin noticed, had little smiley faces penned on them. This little detail was utterly baffling to the shorter man, but it was also endearing. Could he say that? It broke some kind of dam in him, allowing an ocean of warmth to cascade all over his body. His heart fluttered in his chest, and he offered Whizzer a smile. “What’s that on your fingers?”

He stopped, pulling off the mitten he had been in the midst of shoving onto his fingers. Softly, he chuckled embarrassedly, admiring the little faces of encouragement he’d drawn. Childish, yes, but they gave him the motivation he lacked sometimes. When all his friends were burdened with their own coursework or had their own tests to fret about, they were all he had. Being holed up in his room, squinting as he tried to fathom the words in his textbook, was just that little bit better when he wasn’t totally alone. Cordelia sat with him sometimes, helped him, but it didn’t feel right to pester her about his pre-exam woes, because she had a decent amount to remember, too. “I, uh, I get distracted while I’m studying sometimes,”

Marvin didn’t respond, but smiled again, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. All these new things he was discovering about the guy he thought he knew made him seem like different person. He even wore glasses sometimes, when he didn’t have his contacts in. Marvin had seen him wear them a couple times, and he wasn’t sure why he didn’t put them on more often. They were a pain sometimes, but he couldn’t help but notice how goddamn adorable he looked in them. Apparently he’d needed them in high school, but kept them locked away in a drawer out of fear that the other jocks on the baseball team would bully him. If he hadn’t been so weak at the time, Marvin would pound anyone who’d done so. He’d had his fair share of bullying himself, which was what triggered his disorder in the first place. 

Eventually, they made it to the restaurant. Cordelia had forced Whizzer to come to the counter with her, because she couldn’t keep track of the stuff he wanted. The place was mostly empty, save for a few stoners and a couple that looked like they were about to break up. Trina was on the verge of passing out at the table, still mumbling nothings about juxtaposition. Mendel sat by her, stroking her hand and talking in a hushed voice. Sitting across from them, Marvin mimed gagging at Whizzer, whose face scrunched up in the way that made the other man’s insides burn. 

After thirty minutes, the two at the counter came back with two trays piled with food. One millisecond after they hit the table, everyone attacked like wolves. Trina was silent - her mind had probably never detached from her essay. She shared a chicken basket with Mendel, who was chugging water and trying to get her to say something. Marvin and Cordelia were in the midst of a condiment war, because the latter was hoarding the ketchup. Charlotte made a futile attempt at playing peacemaker. Nobody really thought to bother Whizzer, for obvious reasons. He was in his element. 

“Why won’t you give me the fucking ketchup?” Marvin said exasperatedly.

Cordelia pushed the bottle further away from him. “Because you’re gonna mix it with the mayonnaise, and I don’t want to see that,”

“You can just look away if you have to, Dee?” Trina said, finally emerging from her trance. 

Rolling her eyes, the girl took a sip of her lemonade. “Charlotte, Trina’s talking logic at me,”

“English majors,” Whizzer piped, speaking for the first time since the food arrived. He’d ditched the blue mittens, and was currently working on Marvin’s fries, having finished his own in about two minutes. Exams only made him hungrier, and that didn’t mean anything good for the other five. 

“Oh, fuck you,” Trina said. “I was going to give you my fries later, but no,” she stressed the last word. 

Wiping her hands on a napkin, the doctor pulled her coat on. “I’m gonna take off,” she said. 

“Where are you going?” her girlfriend said, her features contorting into an expression of dejection. 

“Home. I need some good, old-fashioned crunch time,” Charlotte said as she did up the buttons on her jacket. She wanted to stay, she really did, but the stellar grade she so desperately wanted was just at her fingertips. It was like a bar that she was trying to jump and catch. Nothing short of an A would be acceptable if she wanted to snatch that internship at the ER, located two or three blocks away. 

She fell asleep on the couch at around three in the morning, textbook open in her lap. 

The blinding sun hit her square in the face the next morning, jarring Charlotte awake. Squinting, she shielded her eyes, still trying to adjust to the light. The apartment was oddly quiet; none of the usual morning hustle was present. Only silence could be registered from the guys’ room, implying that Whizzer and Marvin were probably asleep. Why Trina was here too, Charlotte didn’t know, but her essay lay on the coffee table in front of her, a thick tome of papers filled with words. A blissful aroma of hazelnut souffle wafted up her nose. Cordelia must have been practising again. While the serenity was soothing, there were uncanny undertones that made Charlotte’s suspicions rise. 

The blonde looked over from the stove, frowning confusedly. “How come you’re still here?”

“Huh?” was all Charlotte could reply, scrubbing at her eyes. “Where is everyone? Where’s Marvin? He asleep?”

“He’s at his exam,” Cordelia said, opening the oven and delicately placing the dessert inside. It had taken more time than she’d have liked, but she was starting to get the hang of making a goddamn souffle. She remembered how stupid she felt when the other students taking her course had managed it, and she was still stuck with flour on her hands and dough in her hair. “Where you should be,”

And then, it was pandemonium as Charlotte leapt off the couch, rousing Trina in the process. Dashing over to the stove, she kissed her girlfriend on the cheek and grabbed the first thing she saw in the fridge. She snatched up her textbook and her coat from the rack, and out she went. The exam had started ten minutes ago. She could probably kiss that internship goodbye. 

Campus was within eyesight when she finally realised.

She’d forgotten a fucking pen.


End file.
